Action related nav

Inside The Bills

Bills head coach Doug Marrone announced that the starting QB job was open to competition last week when the team announced they had re-signed Tarvaris Jackson. At the NFL Combine he explained how each of the top two competitors in that forthcoming battle took the news.

“I’ve talked to Tarvaris on the phone, I’ve spoken to Ryan on the phone,” said Marrone. “Really my conversations between the players are private. I think that Ryan… and I really hate speaking for the players, but I think that (Ryan’s) good. I think we’re all competitors. When I was interviewing for the job there were other people interviewing for the job and I’m okay with that. I’m competing. When I was a player myself we were always with competition whether it was from someone else or competition within. I know in my experience I’ve never really seen a player that wasn’t open to competition.”

Marrone said with both players having NFL experience and NFL starts under their belt an open competition was “natural.”

“I think that players whether they’re competitive with themselves to be the best they can be or competitive going against people at their position to prove that they should be on our roster is in all of us,” he said. “So for us to come in we’re all being competitive in what we’re doing.”

Buffalo’s head coach also said he’s conducted an evaluation of Fitzpatrick and Jackson on tape, but he’s not going to share his conclusions with the media or the public without talking to the quarterbacks themselves first. That won’t happen until April 2nd when players can report for the offseason conditioning program.

“I’m a big believer is watching the tape is part of the process,” said Marrone. “If I was going to talk to evaluation of a player I would want to do it face to face with the player first. I can’t do that until the players report. So I have to wait until I start working with the players on the field and even when we do that we’re in t-shirts and shorts and the game is a contact sport.”